Why Aren't Raiders Fans More Outraged?

David Steele

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 11, 2001

THE RAIDERS vs. NFL trial in Los Angeles the past month or so has produced just about everything. Everything, that is, except outrage.

Not from the combatants; both sides have presented their share of it. No outrage from the Raiders' fans in Oakland; not even during the past two days, when Al Davis has been on the stand and said -- after swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help him God -- "I wanted to be here, in Los Angeles. I wanted the Raiders to be here."

Maybe it's because true outrage has to be accompanied by shock. Davis' statement about his love for his former home market, at the time he was negotiating the move to Oakland in June 1995, should have been about as much of a shock as his statement, on the stand, that his team has a "commitment to excellence."

It's one thing to suspect, or even be sure, that the Raiders are trying to bail out again. It's something else to see someone put his hand on the Bible and enter it into the court's records.

You Raiders fans out there, the ones who bleed silver and black and encourage those around you to do the same (or whichever color they prefer), you ought to have your feelings really hurt. You should be tearing up tickets, or PSL re-order forms, or Rich Gannon jerseys, or car-window decals, or something. At least you ought to be making promises never to set foot inside the Coliseum as long as you live.

You should be outraged.

But it looks so far as if you're not. The more it becomes obvious that you've been played and continue to get played by both the Raiders and the NFL, and the more it seems as if everyone involved on both sides was bending over backward for Los Angeles instead of for you, the more your passion grows for next week's draft, and for the need to find a reliable safety, and for locking up Jon Gruden long term.

The Raiders finally gave you a team worthy of your loyalty, support and money last year, the sixth year they've been back in town. They're asking for more of the same for next season. In return they're giving you . . . what, exactly? Another forum for kicking dirt on your city's good name and on your undying, unrequited, seemingly unconditional love? This trial is about a lot of things (a billion green things, in fact), but it's also been about slapping Oakland around and saying, "You know you like it."

Which brings us to our poll question of the day.

Log on and send a message to the e-mail address at the bottom of this column. Or write to me at The Sporting Green. Include your name and hometown, try to keep it reasonably profanity-free, and answer this question:

Why?

I mean, I think I know the answer. Fans are fans; I started out as one and always will be one. Fans love their teams through thick and thin, and no matter how irrational and illogical their surroundings and circumstances seem, fans hang in there.

But this is way beyond the usual call of duty. This is more than any city's fans have been asked to endure. Teams have left other towns. Rarely (if ever) have they returned. Even more rarely have they then sued for, ostensibly, the right to leave again to go back to the same place for which they'd spurned their original city.

This isn't a request to quit on the Raiders; no one can tell you that (as easy as it is for the likes of me to do it). No one's asking you to boycott them or throw out your caps and jackets or picket the Coliseum or burn Davis in effigy.

Just explain why you're not going to do it. Why you instead are going to show up next season, get a nice sellout string going, break out the Darth Vader masks and spiked collars, paint the van silver and black, rip Gannon and Gruden on the radio every time they lose, scream and beat your chest every time they win and keep up a running war with Broncos fans and Los Angeles residents in the chat rooms. All for a team that apparently still has the engines running on the moving vans that brought them here six years ago -- and never wanted to start the engines to leave L.A. in the first place.

We'll revisit this in a couple of weeks -- by which time a lawyer in that courtroom in L.A. probably will have said, "Let the record show that the object on which the witness blew his nose was a map of Oakland."

You're on the stand now, and you've been directed to simply answer the question.

"Why?"

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